Raithe

I kind of see the self-sacrifice one as the most logical for canon... Pushes the mystery aspects, adds to the Bob Paige ending talk of "search the wreckage", and adds the posibility of

It's pretty much the and you'll be done... at least for one playthrough.

Woke up from some semi-odd dreams because a dog jumped onto the bed and landed on my back. Then kind of laid there with the sounds of high winds in the trees and rain on the windows being a tad hypnotic... The rain has now stopped, but the wind is still causing a hellava lot of tree sway and branch/leaf rustle. Trying to keep my brain ticking along and in some form of focus as the day shapes up...

Also, some of the hacks let you hack the registry. If you do, you automatically "win" the hack and pick up all the datastores, even if you haven't captured them yourself.

Eidos Montreal had planned more City Hubs An interview with JJB and Frank Lapikas, mentions how they'd actually planned there to be streets in Montreal, a seperate hub for Upper Hengsha (most of which had actually been built), and even a small hub in India somewhere.. but due to constraints they'd had to cut them down.

Gran is away in france visiting one of my uncles.. so we snuck over to her house to pull up a bunch of paving stones in her garden, level out the surface since it had all started sinking in, then relayered the paving stones. Now I'm home, it's noon..and I'm getting to enjoy my first damn cup of tea of the day. Huzzah.

Read an amusing editorial on just how "rapey" George R R Martin's fantasy series is. Identifying each major female character, and just how many incidents of threatened rape, actual rape, raped and fell in love with rapist, which book either happened in, the general spousal abuse, and the teenage rape. Ended with an "if I hadn't run into Mr Martin at a convention and found him fairly pleasant, I'd think he'd be an exceptionally creepy man if I went by those books..."

Been doing a slow paced 2nd playthrough of Deus Ex Human Revolution off and on between moments of reality...

Got called in as "IT support" by a friend , so spend some time trying to solve a problem on a laptop. Complicated by the fact it was set to Chilean Spanish... and the spanish speaker didn't know how to translate completely. Then ended the evening with cuban cigars and cuban rum supplied by that friend as we sat around afterwards.

I would say that I kept expecting there to be some sidequest involving the slew of missing girls in Detroit. You overhear a couple of conversations relating to it, you see the Missing posters up around the hub, and you can hack into the computer of the cop who is handling the case... But I never actually found anything you could look into relating to it. Background fluff, or potential DLC aspect?

Hm, my first playthrough I wandered in there before I even knew I needed that card and it let me pick it up, had a nice little dialogue of "hey do you know of any use for a tym smart card? ah well, maybe it'll be useful later". I didn't think it was possible to break quests by picking things up or wandering into areas early...

I think the one key piece of narrative that really annoyed me, was at TYM and the fact that you have to listen to the whole "helpless woman" routine and can't interrupt it. Throughout that whole talk, I just wanted to scream at Jensen "Stop listening and being distracted, just chin the bitch!"

The Animals - House of the Rising Sun Sometimes, that just suits the mood.

On the return to Hengsha. It's impossible to miss, it bumps into the main storyline, so if you progress that.. the bonus mission will kick off.

Just picked up mom's prescriptions from the doctors and took them over the pharmacy, got jumped by a hyper-enthusiastic "paid professional fund-raiser" for some "sponsor a child" in bali charity. They're all "just give us the money for a kebab a week and it'll save a child!". I'm so tempted to ask them if they feel it's so important why aren't they just raising money as volunteer work, and putting their paycheque towards these kids. Although at the moment being able to do the whole "i'm a primary carer for a disabled parent, my income is x a week from the government. you can't make me feel guilty and my budget is that tight." is usually a good way of stopping them. Then got home to find that with all the road works going on at the junction, some car's driven past ours and smashed the wing mirror. And never bothered to mention it. But dang, it's warm. Refreshing myself with a pineapple, banana and coconut smoothie.

The second boss battle depends heavily on whether you have one aug or not. The only aug's that really count against federova are if you have the EMP shielding..which is quite useful.. or the dermal plating because she can do so much damage quickly. My stealthy hacker ran up against Barret, but by throwing three explosives under his feet and setting them off together he was out quick. Against Federova, If you're good with sprint and have a few emp grenades, once you figure out to keep an eye on the water for where she's running as cloaked.. it turned out fairly simple to keep dashing out of the way of her typhoon blasts, then stun her with emp and unload the heavy rifle on her.. Similarly with Namir, as long as you have something to quickly stun him.. it's just about dropping several explosives under him and he's out. The boss fights are annoying even on Deus Ex difficulty, but don't rely on you having any specific aug. I just wish they did have some non-pure-boom route to deal with them.

It's that whole inter-connectivity of muscles in the back.. the way it's almost impossible to make any movement without the whole thing flaring up. So my condolences Wals. Tis turned all bright and sunny here, and managed to get the dogs somewhat settled. But have to do the walk up to the doctors to pick up mom's prescriptions in a bit.. Definitely the the rather bright sky that's calling for sunglasses.

I was thinking of doing a new playthrough on normal difficulty this time around. Just to see what differences do show up compared to the "Give me Deus Ex"

May fortune favour you Tarna. Been one of those mornings, weird dreams, overslept when the alarm didn't go off. The puppy has been a bit of a nightmare, but finally seem to have him settled down. And I've got one of those annoying.. muscle-ripple-twitches in one eyelid. Trying to decide whether to settle for an early lunch snack and a fresh cup of tea, or make an attempt at focusing on some work...

I have to admit, there was something both subtly "wrong" but aestheticlly pleasing about the white room at the end of the Omega Ranch...

LED Contact Lenses Following in the wake of Deus Ex.. not sure if anything on this has been mentioned before, but Augmented Reality could be coming soon...

Ah there is actually some semi-random system. Everyone chooses their reply, but the dialog system will pick one of them as the "legit" rersponse and play that cutscene with that persons response. And it does that for every dialog choice. So just because someone "won" the first response, doesn't mean they'll be controlling every response in the sequence. If I remember correctly, there will be something that "weights" the results or scores the random number generator or whatever it is depending on how many in a group go for a specific type of resonse (ie, if more people choose a dark side response, it's more likely to select one of them rather then the minority choices). But I'm fuzzy on exactly what it is. Also I have a fuzzy memory that it had somethign that for each time you "win" a dialog roll you get some kind of social credit. Dang it. now my memory is totally futzing on exactly what they said so I might have totally ballsed up that answer. But it's in that vague area.

I think the melee system really becomes noticable in . With all the crazies attacking you with fists and you suddenly can lose massive health in just a few moments. It's one thing when it's bullets or such, but when random workmen driven crazy can wave their arms and whap your health like that.. it makes it a bit silly that Jensen doesn't have some form of melee that isn't an energy sucking auto-takedown.

I would have liked if that Bob Paige epilogue after the end credits had actually changed depending on the choice you made. Oh well. It was still kind of neat. I can't make up my mind whether I like that you keep finding credits in as you go on.. It's not like you can actually spend the 20k you have by that point.. I mean you go in and you pick up those two praxis points from the Limb Clinic..and you still have that much money..and keep finding more. One the one hand, it's a little pointless.. on the other.. it does keep to a certain sense of realism that you'll find loose change even if you can't use it for anything.

There are times I do wonder why people have pets. It's been that sort of morning. The puppy has diarhea, when it's not out crapping, it's trying to eat the cat, when it's not trying to eat the cat it's pawing at me and whining to play. Or to let it out. When the puppy is being quiet, the spaniel is going nuts. When both dogs are settled, the cat decides to have its own back and pounces on the alsatian, or jumps on the desk and sits in front of my monitor to meow and try to bully treats. And I've had to hold the cat's rear under the tap and wash it after it emerged from the kitty litter with a.. mess.. firmly attached. Yay for cat scratches.